Electronic Pen

Mr. Booker and other Senate Democrats faced questions Sunday about reports that Mr. Platner’s wife previously told his campaign he had exchanged sexual messages with women outside his marriage.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not attend the annual Israel Day Parade, which is taking place amid a deterioration of public support for the country and rising antisemitism across the United States.

The former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., is scheduled to be set free on Monday, after her nine-year prison sentence was commuted by Gov. Jared Polis.

The seizure of Beaufort in southern Lebanon called up bitter memories in both countries amid a widening Israeli conflict with Hezbollah that seems far from over.

Come November, the Republican Party will need the support of voters outside of President Trump’s base, many of whom are deeply dissatisfied with the economy and the Iran war.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill and other New Jersey elected officials have urged calm as demonstrators clashed with police while protesting conditions at the immigration detention center.

Clinical trials in China are getting attention at an international oncology gathering in Chicago. China’s surging biotechnology industry is fueling alarm that U.S. dominance in the field is waning.

The prospect of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe raises unsettling theological implications.

We seem to have forgotten more or less everything.

His changes to the proposed deal were potentially designed to speed up the process by putting pressure on Iran to accept the current framework, one official said.

The departure of more than 10,000 federal lawyers has left some agencies without sufficient staff and has boosted the ranks of state attorneys general offices and advocacy groups.

“Heteropessimism” is all the rage — but really, there’s never been a better time to be looking for love. Go on, be a hetero-optimist.

Steve Hilton grabbed headlines when he worked in conservative politics in Britain. His American political renaissance in the California governor’s race has bemused former British colleagues and rivals.

The A.I. actress on her craft, the future of film and how she definitely does not intend to murder us.

Discussions among a group of lawyers with allegiance to the president were closely held. Some senior White House officials were said to have felt blindsided as the agreement took shape.

Clifford E. Stanley, a retired broker, explains his unusual mission, which caught a lot of people by surprise.

WILL DURST FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

And now, another installment in the continuing saga that is The Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Soap Opera. When last we left him, the candidate was praising his main backers: "The Koch Brothers are my brothers from another mother."  Guess we should be grateful he hasn't dismissed his accusers with an offhand: "Bros before hoes."

You could say the situation is fluid, or more precisely glutinous. It's hard to tell who or what to believe. Conservative talk shows pound home the theory this is all a put- up job while the liberal media remains incredulous the Cain Train hasn't derailed into a fiery pileup. Right now it all boils down to a classic case of He Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said.

The good news for the first- ever, serious black Republican Presidential candidate is a new CBS poll reveals 61% of potential GOP primary participants don't consider the charges serious. Apparently there's a large contingent of voters who either believe girls lie or boys will be boys. In three short years this country has gone from Hope and Change to Grope and Change. Ain't life odd?

In his defense, Cain maintains he's never engaged in any inappropriate behavior. Ever. Really? Ever? Hell, if this Presidency thing doesn't work out, the guy should run for Pope. Or maybe he's better equipped to replace Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Of course, the term "inappropriate" is objective. Fashionistas might call his cowboy hat highly inappropriate.

Cain's staff went so far as to say the sexual harassment allegations have actually helped the campaign. Helped! Wow. All he needs is a false imprisonment charge, he could sew this thing right up.

Cain has changed his story almost as often as Mitt Romney changes positions. And his memory problems draw right up to Rick Perry's Energy Department. Again, almost. First he couldn't remember anything, then admitted a charge may have been investigated, but there was no settlement, then maybe there was An Agreement, but now he refuses to comment on any of the cases, relentlessly retreating to his stuttering German "nein, nein, nein."

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JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Climate change produced Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.  Although the corporate media and the U.S. government have swept the Fukushima nuclear disaster under the proverbial censorship rug, it's important to remember that an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale and the ensuing 50-foot high tsunami wave led to a meltdown of three of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Japan's nuclear regulatory agency reported that 31 radioactive isotopes were released. In contrast, 16 radioactive isotopes were released from the A-bomb that hit Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945. The agency also reported that radioactive cesium released was almost 170 times the amount of the A-bomb, and that the release of radioactive Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 was about two to three times the level of the A-bomb.  And that information doesn't include the unknown deadly amount of radioactive water from the Fukushima plants that are being perpetually dumped into the Pacific Ocean since the meltdowns occurred last March 2011.

Terming Fukushima Japan's "second massive nuclear disaster," novelist Haruki Murakami said "this time no one dropped a bomb on us" but instead "we set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives. While we are the victims, we are also the perpetrators. We must fix our eyes on this fact," he continued. "If we fail to do so, we will inevitably repeat the same mistake again, somewhere else."   Indeed, a recent report revealed that radiation is being detected across Europe. "Anywhere spent nuclear fuel is handled, there is a chance that... iodine-131 will escape into the environment," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says on its website.

Speaking as a part-time resident of Kauai, we've been immensely concerned about radiation plumes blowing over from Japan.  If the government has been monitoring radiation levels, then that critical information has been concealed from the public.

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On the morning of November 14th, the Oakland police again dismantled the Occupy camp in Oscar Grant Plaza. This action was allegedly taken because a man was killed in an altercation near Occupy Oakland last week, and because the Occupy camp has become a place where homeless people can be fed and sheltered.

It was the 101st murder this year in Oakland, and its use as a reason to squash Occupy Oakland is tragically absurd:

A man was shot and killed Thursday just outside the Oakland encampment that anti-Wall Street protesters have occupied for the last month, causing a scream-filled commotion in the City Hall plaza where the camp stands and turning a planned anniversary celebration into a somber, candlelit memorial.

With opinions about Occupy Oakland and its effect on the city having become more divided in recent days, supporters and opponents immediately reacted to the homicide - the city's 101st this year.

Camp organizers said the attack was unrelated to their activities, while city and business leaders, cited the death as proof that the camp itself either bred crime or drained law enforcement resources from other parts of the Oakland.

Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized by residents on both sides for issuing mixed signals about the local government's willingness to tolerate the camp, issued a statement Thursday providing a clear eviction notice.

"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great," Quan said. "We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution."

Ironically, as BuzzFlash at Truthout noted awhile back, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) is under the watch of a federal judge who has said the department is so egregiously in noncompliance with reasonable police standards that it may be put into federal receivership. It seems that the OPD has a history of planting evidence, framing arrested individuals and being trigger happy, among other "irregularities."

But the most profound injustice is the notion that in a city where 100 people have been killed this year - and even with the heavy police presence around the Occupy Oakland site, this one particular murder wasn't prevented - somehow the Occupy movement was the cause of the shooting.

To blame the Occupy movement for a shooting located in a society that does little to prevent approximately 10,000 firearm homicides a year in the United States, with a large chunk of them in neglected African-American and Latino communities, is beyond nonsensical; it's admitting the failure of the status quo to address violence in a large economically deprived underclass that is generally ignored.

As to feeding and housing the homeless and hungry, isn't that something cities across the nation should be doing? Isn't that what Christ implored of his followers?

What the Occupy movement is doing is not causing an increase in violence and homelessness; it is inadvertently exposing the epidemic of violence, particularly shootings, and poor people without means in need of services.

That is the biggest threat to the status quo of the Oakland municipal government, and to cities across the nation that are unleashing militarized police forces on generally harmless protesters advocating for a just society. The institutionalized powers of government and the 1 percent would prefer that the squalid, deadly underside of our society remain swept under the rug, all covered up.

The truth is too inconvenient and disruptive.

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The One Percent Solution is the name of a novel by

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The verbal gaffe that's basically ended

The Texas Governor’s political life

Reminded me of this famous incident in

The long career of Barney Phife

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBuPQgV8yBM